It might be time to start mentioning Motorola in the conversation about the best smartphone cameras. Motorola hardware doesn't have a strong track record when it comes to smartphone photography, the company's DROID 2 Turbo now holds the fourth spot in DxOMark's ranks of top mobile cameras.
DxOMark, which benchmarks cameras with its image processing software, ranks the DROID 2 Turbo's 21 MP rear camera behind the Sony Xperia Z5 (1st), Samsung S6 Edge (2nd) and Google Nexus 6P (3rd). The DROID Turbo 2 ranks ahead of the LG G4 (5th), Samsung Note 4 (6th), Moto X Style (7th), Sony Xperia Z3+ (8th), Apple iPhone 6 Plus (9th) and Apple iPhone 6 (10).
In both good and low-light environments, the DROID Turbo 2's still shots are well-exposed in general, says DxOMark. The white balance is accurate and the camera renders colors pleasantly.
"When shooting outdoors in good lighting conditions, strong detail preservation is also evident, with almost no noise visible, even in homogeneous areas of color such as the sky," says DxOMark. "When shooting high-contrast scenes, the brightest highlights are sometimes over-exposed in order to retain some detail in the shadows, but this isn't uncommon with high dynamic range exposures."
The DROID Turbo 2's camera isn't perfect, however. DxOMark's benchmarks detected a bit of luminance noise. More specifically, ghosting and color fringing were two of the camera's biggest trouble spots.
"The ghosting effect of a blurred or 'double image' in the shot was sometimes visible when activating the DROID Turbo 2's HDR mode," says DxOMark. "In this mode, any subject movement from, say, a person or vehicle is sometimes ghosted as a result of the phone's image-processing engine merging together two slightly inconsistent images."
Motorola says it designed the DROID Turbo 2 to shatter expectations, it seems the company wasn't talking about the handset's impressive primary camera. The smartphone has a display the company calls Shattershield, which is supposed to prevent the DROID Turbo 2's face from turning into a web of cracks when dropped.
Another standout feature on the DROID Turbo 2 include its fast charging system, which can absorb about 13 hours of battery life in about 15 minutes of charging.
Elsewhere in the handset there's a 2.0 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 810, a 5.4-inch Quad HD display and a 5 MP selfie camera.
